parts of temperate Europe were dominated by warriors on horseback already in
the fourth millennium BC, but that idea has been mostly and rightly abandoned.
Archaeological evidence suggests that although atrocities were committed from
time to time in Europe, pitched battles did not occur until well into the second
millennium BC. Until late in the Bz A2 period the long-range weapons in Europe
were the self bow and the sling, and when a hand-to-hand mêlée did occur battle-
axes and daggers must have sufficed. Every man was the protector of his own
family and belongings, and there was not yet a warrior class in Europe. Then things
changed, and the change coincided with the arrival from the east of the “tamed”
horse and the chariot. Across western Eurasia not all of the men involved in this
innovation spoke an Indo-European language, and many (possibly even most) Indo-
European speakers knew nothing at all about chariot warfare. But apparently the
Indo-European connections with the new militarism were substantial enough to
change the linguistic map of Europe.
Notes
1 Hacker 2012, p. 182.
2 The tripartite society and the place of the warriors is described at length in Dumézil’s
Aspects de la fonction guerrière chez les Indo-Européens(Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France, 1956), and his L’idéologie tripartie des Indo-Européens(Brussels: Latomus,
1958). Parts of the thesis, however, had been put forward in two small books already
in the 1930s: his Ouranos-Varuna: étude de mythologie comparée indoeuropéene(Paris:
Maisonneuve, 1934) and Flamen-Brahman(Paris: Geuthner, 1935). A more developed
thesis then appeared in a short article: Dumézil’s “La préhistoire des flamines majeurs,”
Revue d’Histoire des Religions118 (1938), pp. 188–200. For one historian’s critique
of Dumézil’s reconstruction of Indo-European society see Momigliano 1984. For a more
positive appraisal see Mallory 1989, pp. 130–135.
3 Renfrew 1987, pp. 250–262.
4 Kristiansen and Larsson 2005, pp. 170–250. For a succinct presentation of the argument
see Kristiansen 2006.
5 On the time and materials required for the manufacture of composite bows see Drews
1993a, p. 110.
6 Cotterell 2004, p. 152. Pp. 142–176 in Cotterell’s book are devoted to a survey of the
evidence for chariot warfare in Indian art as well as literature.
7 On these archaic compound nouns see Witzel 2003, p. 27 with footnote 119. See also
Witzel 2001, p. 9.
8 Ralph T. H. Griffith, translator, The Hymns of the Rig Veda(Benares: E. J. Lazarus,
1896). At Drews 1993a, p. 125, I quoted—to no avail—several verses of this hymn in
Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty’s 1981 translation. For a review of Vedic evidence on the
Indian chariot in ritual see Sparreboom 1985. For its use in warfare see Singh 1965,
pp. 10, 26 and 31.
9 Raulwing 2009, p. 7.
10 This term, the names in the treaty between the kings of Hatti and Mittani, and the
technical terms in the Kikkuli treatise, are often regarded as Indo-Aryan rather than
Proto-Indo-Iranian (that is, Proto-Aryan). For arguments along that line see Thieme
- Although the terms and names are much closer to Vedic than to Avestan, I remain
persuaded by Kammenhuber 1968 that the similarity is due to the conservative character
of Indo-Aryan versus the innovative character of Iranian. Kammenhuber concluded
that the names and terms come from a period before Proto-Aryan divided into its Indian
Chariot warfare and militarism 125